Future Dave

Although I supported Obama, I have to say that I have my doubts about the “stimulus” program. There are several reasons, but most of them boil down to “Larry Summers needs to go.” Here is my quick summary:

1. Bailouts are much too limited in scope, and assume the banks even can be saved. Bailing out 20 banks is like giving free health insurance to the 20 tallest drivers involved in a 50-car accident. If you have watched any TV shows about hospitals; the first step is to check and see who is still alive. Then you check to see who needs help immediately. After you are satisfied that they will live, then you check their insurance. Finally, you make a loan to people who can’t afford to pay. The bank bailout skips directly to step 4.

2 Bailouts do not take advantage of market forces. If you want to encourage safe driving, you can’t spend all your time cleaning up accidents. Similarly, if you are spending all of your cash saving banks, you are not doing anything to help the economy. Banks don’t build cars. Banks don’t build roads. These days, banks don’t even loan to people who do.

3. “Moral Hazard.” If you give money to a bank for making a bad investment, you are encouraging them to make more bad investments. Even if you can force them to stop the bad behavior through regulation, you are still rewarding the bad behavior that took place the previous year. Banks that took too many risks need to be chopped up into little pieces, and given away to banks that were run properly. Any other course of action will lead to bigger failures in the future.

4. The bailout isn’t working. The measure of a government program needs to be: “Does it work?” (This is a loose quote from Presidential Candidate Obama.) We know now that giving a half trillion dollars to banks did not fix the economy. It is absurd to suppose that another $500 billion will show any different results.

5. You can’t borrow your way out of debt. The government is pouring so much money into banks that it is tilting the entire economy toward supporting the banking system. The economy can adjust for a small tilt, but once the “investment” reaches 10% of GDP or so, the process can never be stopped. The national debt is nearly there already. Soon, the “stimulus” portion of the national debt will be there. Since the money comes from borrowing, the process of repayment would pull so much money out of the economy that it would dampen every other form of investment. At a certain point, the debt will be too big to repay. It has not happened yet, but it doesn’t need to. Once the trend is set, inflation will eat into the currency to the point where economic recovery stops.

6. Larry Summers is part of the problem. Summers has received millions of dollars in speaking fees and other compensation from hedge funds, banks, and other investment firms. He has never been a clear voice for regulation of the security industry, and instead supported some of the worst examples of deregulation. When he was President of Harvard he made absolutely no progress in ridding their investment portfolio of absurdly overpriced derivatives, and in fact may have encouraged the exact forms of risk he is now charged to control. When Summers advises the President that the best course of action is to continue the bank bailouts, his advice is more of a setback than a solution. He is tainted by his years of service to the banking industry, and he is hopelessly biased toward the crony system that created the problem. Summers needs to go.

On April 2, 2009, the FASB voted to allow “Mark-to-Imagination” accounting for certain types of securities.

So if you have an old college accounting textbook that mentions the “principle of conservatism”, it needs to be re-written. Conservatism, briefly, says that you can’t count your chickens until they hatch. So, in addition to throwing out some textbooks, I also need to forget some of the things my mom told me. Later today I will go out running with scissors.

Conservatism also prevents you from recognizing profit on assets that have a 98% chance of default. This was a good thing. You don’t want a bank to even own a steaming pile of Merril Lynch, much less pretend to recognize a profit on it. FASB, on the other hand, says that if the assets would be profitable in an “orderly” market, then go ahead and recognize that profit and pay yourself a bonus while you are at it.

If you know anything about bankers these days, then you know they will bend any rule in order to give themselves big bonus checks.

This may not work out well if they are allowed to pay bonuses on imaginary income.

As more and more details come out about the way AIG was being run, it is starting to become apparent that their collapse was not an accident.

President Obama and his Economic Dancers (”POED”) still believe that AIG was an insurance company that made a few mistakes and got killed when the banking system collapsed. As the facts come out, the bankers at AIG seem a lot less like the George Bailey in “Wonderful Life”, and a lot more like Christopher Walken in “View to a Kill”. (or Gary Oldman in pretty much every other businessman-is-evil movie.)

We have known for some time that AIG issued more insurance, reinsurance, and Credit Default Swaps than they could ever cover. We now are finding out that AIG knew it at the time, and issued the contracts with “side letters” in full knowledge that the agreements were fraudulent.

The “side letters” are secret agreements that the insurance policy will never be called. As you might imagine, these agreements are illegal. Insurance companies use side letters to allow other financial institutions to escape regulations, and in many cases, to commit even more massive fraud. For all practical purposes, AIG was using insurance policies and side letters to crate their own form of illegal derivative. The basic idea was that everyone made money by cheating the investors, and if it all came apart, you could fire a few employees and pretend to solve the problem.

The Board of Directors claims lack of knowledge, which of course was the whole idea. But this kind of cluelessness is the mark of people going out of their way to stay oblivious.

If a monkey gets loose and sets off a few firecrackers, the zoo can always pretend that they had no idea how it happened. When he gets hold of a brand new rocket-launcher and takes down a team of Blue Angels in the middle of an air show, it is a little harder.

When AIG lost a few billion in absurd derivatives, it is easy for the managers to pretend they never saw it coming. When they take down the entire banking system of Planet Earth, it is a little naïve to suppose that no one thought to keep the rocket-launcher away from the monkeys.

There are a few people left in the country who still believe the current recession was caused by over-regulation of the housing market. Everyone else has been watching the news.
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Ever since the first city/states started creating the first central currencies, there has always been a “primary” economy and a “secondary” one. The primary economy, for lack of a better phrase, is composed of people doing things. Farmers raise food, workers build things, and soldiers confiscate the aforementioned food and buildings. Each of the people in this primary economy are paid for the results of their actions. Even brokers, salesmen and teachers are part of the primary economy, since they supply “distribution”, and “education”, which are services, but tangible in the sense that you can watch them as they happen.

Then there is a secondary economy that deals only in intangibles. If a country had no secondary economy, for example, then all issues of legality, reputation, and ownership would be resolved by simple means of force. In “civilized” society, though, all such questions (and answers) are supplied by workers in the secondary economy. The biggest intangible, of course, is the currency itself. As a result, the “big money” in the secondary economy is controlled by lenders and bankers.

One of the many symptoms of a civilization in decline is when the “secondary” economy starts to get more powerful than the “primary” economy. Read the rest of this entry »

Little Melissa comes home from first grade and tells her father that they learned about the history of Valentine’s Day.

“Since Valentine’s Day is for a Christian saint and we’re Jewish,” she asks, “will God get mad at me for giving someone a valentine?

Melissa’s father thinks a bit, then says, “No, I don’t think God would get mad. Who do you want to give a valentine to?”

“Osama Bin Laden,” she says

“Why Osama Bin Laden?” her father asks in shock.

“Well,” she says, ” I thought that if a little American Jewish girl could have enough love to give Osama a valentine, he might start to think that maybe we’re not all bad, and maybe start loving people a little bit. And if other kids saw what I did and sent valentines to Osama, he’d love everyone a lot. And then he’d start going all over the place to tell everyone how much he loved them and how he didn’t hate anyone anymore.”

Her father’s heart swells and he looks at his daughter with newfound pride.

“Melissa, that’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know,” Melissa says, “and once that gets him out in the open, the Marines could blow his ass away.”

Polls in 1999 indicated that 17% of the people in the United States believed that Elvis was still alive. This became known the infamous “Elvis Line”, which is considered to be a statistical proof that 17% of the people in the U.S. are either crazy or stupid. It doesn’t mean they can’t be trusted to make decisions … they usually balance out.

This statistical conclusion has been validated many times, for example:

17% of all Americans just vote for whichever name comes first on the ballot.
17% of Americans believe the end of the world will come in our lifetimes.
17% of Americans still believe that Bush was a great President.

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How should a church speak to political issues?

The Bible has a number of verses that imply that marriage is sanctified only for husband and wife. The GOP has endorsed a constitutional amendment that would prohibit homosexual marriages. The Democrats have agreed with the Bible, but not the constitutional amendment.  To me, this seems to set up the perfect opportunity for the discussion. There is a clear difference between the two parties, and the church clearly falls into the camp of only one.
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They seem to be well-dressed, and Lord knows they seem to be feeding themselves, but I am worried that no one seems to be able to keep them from sticking their fingers in the light-sockets.  At first, I thought it was the lack of adult supervision, but I am now convinced it is some sort of mind-altering drug.

On July 30, we learned that the FASB was going to allow off-balance-sheet financing for another year “to give financial institutions more time to prepare for the switch”.

In case you have been living in a cave with other Enron shareholders since 2001, FASB was supposed to impose honest bookkeeping, particularly in cases where it would be surprising.  How could it take four years to prepare for honest bookkeeping?  After only two months, Barry Bonds tested negative for coffee, never mind off-balance-sheet androstenedione.

  Read the rest of this entry »

Jane Healy recently wrote an article that placed the blame for government spending directly on local governments. Although the article appeared in the “opinion / editorial” section, maybe the Sentinel needs to have a more honest description of the section, and call it “Things I Just Made Up”.

Ms. Healy is correct that the firefighters unions were opposed to the efforts to eliminate union jobs. In fact, this is one of the main reasons that people join unions. If Ms Healy expects any union to voluntarily eliminate union positions, then she will be disappointed by every union negotiation in the United States for the rest of her life. While it is true that consolidation of services might save money, IF the main purpose for consolidating services is to eliminate jobs, then you can always count on opposition from the people being eliminated. If I were to propose that the Sentinel lower the price of their weekend paper by firing Ms. Healy, for example, I suspect she would oppose that idea.

Ms Healy seems disappointed that tax rates are not “dropping like a rock”, and she implies that the reason why is that cities and counties offer “cushy benefits”. These ideas are not supported by facts. For many years, the thing that allowed some cities and counties to offer good benefits is that the governments planned their budgets carefully, managed their resources wisely, and watched their expenses. While AIG, Citicorp, GM and others are crying for taxpayer handouts, Orange County quietly decreased countywide base tax millage rate from 5.1639 to 4.4347, a tax cut of about 14%.

The fact of the matter is that government does not work like a business. Business can make snap decisions, turn on a dime, and completely reorganize every year if they have to. Governments can’t. Governments do not change quickly, and should not. When someone says a government manager “really likes to take big risks” that is not a compliment. When a government organization is “trying things that have never been tried before”, you can bet that government is a disorganized mess, and they are wasting taxpayers money on a bunch of trendy experiments that will need to be fixed again in a few years time.

Orange County continues to offer an old-fashioned pension, not only because it is required by the State of Florida, but because it allows the County to hire top managers for a fraction of what they would make in private industry. According to a recent study, private companies with a median revenue of $3.2 billion - which is similar to the budget controlled by Orange County – offered their CEO’s a median total direct compensation of $4.7 million per year. That is the same as the top 30 people in Orange County government put together, including even the doctors and lawyers.

Ms Healy argues that since private employers have decided to pay their employees less and to take away many benefits, that means governments should do the same. But this is just her opinion, and most economists disagree. In fact, the dominant view among economists is that the financial security of the middle class creates far more economic growth than it costs. Most economists argue that the government has it right, and the corporations that are cutting their benefits have it all wrong.

See:
Economists View
New York Times
Washington Post
Financial Times

The problem is that Ms Healey is offering her opinion, but she could just as easily be wrong as right. In Fiscal year 2009, the average salary of Orange County employees will be about $43,000 per year. Ms Healy’s opinion is that this figure is too high. But the fact is that median income in Florida is more than 7% higher than that. Certainly, Orange County could hire cheaper employees, and many taxpayers claim that the quality of the work would be unchanged, but again, that is just an opinion.

If you let the lowest priced employees run the legal and accounting departments of a government for a few years, you quickly realize that saving money on payroll is no bargain. Firemen and Sheriff Deputy jobs are also poor places to try out unskilled workers. Taxpayers have the right to expect a high level of service from government employees, but it is not realistic to demand longer hours, better service, and less pay.

Ms Healey ends the editorial by blaming Orange County for not lobbying the State to eliminate the DROP rules. This is just silly. While every other county would be in Tallahassee asking for help to build roads, to organize after-school programs, to protect the environment, and to keep the court system functioning, Orange County would be spending money to lobby the legislature to take away employee benefits. Every elected official in the county would lose their job, and they would deserve it.

Nearly two-thirds of the 1,000 largest companies in the United States still sponsor a pension plan. For the last 70 years, these pension plans have proven to be a valuable benefit to all of society. Now Ms. Healy offers her opinion that cutting them by half would be just as good. Does she have any proof for that at all, or is this something she just made up?

These are serious problems. The discussion of solutions should be serious. Tossing out ideas with no backup is not helpful.

The TARP continues transforming. The good news is Treasury Secretary Paulson has finally figured out what everyone else was saying all along: buying troubled bank assets is inefficient and subject to waste, fraud, and corruption.

The bad news is, the Treasury has found newer, more efficient ways to subject the TARP money to waste fraud and corruption. (These seem to carry the added benefit of being unapproved, and possibly illegal.)

Enormous piles of taxpayer money have always attracted the worst possible characters. Barry Ritholtz compared them to hyenas stealing the kill from a lion. (This is something of an insult to hyenas, who could survive without government handouts.) The comparison is useful, though, because the scent of easy money has attracted a whole pack of scavengers and grave-robbers. It does not matter to them that the money was intended to rescue the financial system. The only thing that matters is that they might be able to grab some of it. We can hardly blame them: They were taught in business school that ethics is for losers. The only lesson they learn from war is that you want to be one of the profiteers, and not one of the soldiers.

How long has it been since a trillion dollars was authorized so quickly, or spent with so little oversight, controls, or transparency? My guess is that it has been at least a few months. The Iraq war is a bigger pot of money, but you have to be in the defense business to reach into that particular cookie jar. The TARP program is open to everyone, and the only requirements are that you need to be extraordinarily greedy and you have to be so bad at your job that you have lost billions of dollars. This combination of greed and incompetence is not as rare on Wall Street as you might think.

American Express — a credit card company which had little or no exposure to mortgages — is now a bank, for the sole purpose of tapping some of that free money. The thinking seems to be, “Big pile-o-cash? Gots to gets me some of that!”

Next pig at the trough is the derivatives-hedge-fund-formerly-known-as-AIG. They were taken over so quickly, with so little oversight (and essentially no due diligence), that the price tag on this has already doubled, and is very likely to double again. After the eventual investigation and audit at Maiden Lane, some low-level operative/scapegoat will go to jail. (This is roughly the same process that prosecuted a few corporals for the torture program at Abu Gharaib.)

And now, along comes General Motors. They are uniquely suited for the bailout: They are greedy and inept in two separate industries. They are running a historically incompetent finance company, and a remarkable failure of an automobile company at the same time. We were taught that unregulated free-market capitalism solves all financial problems by killing off the weak. Instead, AIG, AmEx and GM are like three badly bleeding sharks that all smell blood in the water. (In this metaphor, the taxpayers are the school of sardines who thought they were just watching.)

General Motors already managed to pilfer $25 billion in taxpayer money for hybrid technology research, which only proved to them that no failure is so great that it keeps you from another great failure. This money did not go to MIT and Stanford, or to the many small innovative firms that pioneered work in this area. Instead, the money was distributed to the most bloated, debt ridden, poorly run, dinosaur in the entire business. Imagine, if during WWII, instead of putting the Manhattan project in the hands of the scientists that had an expertise in nuclear physics and atomic technology, we instead trusted the project to GM. Do you suppose it would be complete yet? Do you suppose we would be speaking Japanese or German in the US today?

To give you an idea how bad this is, my wife and I both agreed with Senator Richard Shelby Sunday on Meet the Press. Shelby said GM shouldn’t get a dime more taxpayer money until they replaced the management that has been running them into th ground for 20 years.

Agreeing with Shelby usually makes you feel dirty. We didn’t even have to wash our hands.

Last month, several economists suggested the bailout plan might cost as much as 3 trillion dollars. At the present rate, $3 trillion is too low.

Just thought you should know.

Luke 3:11 - And [John the Baptist] would answer and say to them, “Let the man with two tunics share with him who has none, and let him who has food do likewise.”

Ps. 140:12. - I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and justice for the poor.

Is. 25:4.  - For You have been a defense for the helpless, a defense for the needy in his distress.
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People in Europe stayed up to hear McCain’s concession speech. McCain’s speech must have been about three in the morning, their time.

I hope they have also heard Obama’s acceptance speech. If they missed it, tell them it was amazing.

He talked about McCain’s service to America, and talked about the confidence that they could work together to solve problems. He talked about being President of the entire United States, and not just the places that voted for him. He talked about how the government is not the solution to every problem, but can still be a force for good. He thanked the people that helped him, but started with his wife and family. (He even promised his daughters that they had “earned that puppy” that he will bring with them to the White House.)

Obama talked about everything that is right about America, and didn’t place the blame for what is wrong. He talked about the spirit that fought World War 2, and the greatness that is still in America. He talked a lot about how much he admired McCain: “Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. He’s fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured hardships in the service of America that most of us can barely imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.”

I started the night just slogging to the end of the election, but was energized by the end of the speech. Kind of nice to know that at the next G8 summit our president won’t be the dumbest person in the room. (Berlusconi can now claim the title. This is as it should be, Italy is proud of their leaders.)

Obama talked about himself very little during his speech, and when he did, it was indirect: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where anything is possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

His wife, for no apparent reason, showed up wearing a furry looking red and black apron. I guess she was trying to prove that she didn’t spend $150 grand on clothes.

No one politician can fix all our problems, but anyone who heard that speech felt better about the President. He didn’t quote Thomas Jefferson, but he should have:

“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over,
their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight,
restore their government to it’s true principles. It is true that in the
mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors
of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt…If the game runs
sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, &
then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have
lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake. Better luck,
therefore, to us all…” - Thomas Jefferson, 1798

(After the speech, CNN pointed out: Voting among 18 to 22 year olds is way up. From 17% in the last election to 18% this year. Ignorant little bastards.)

McCain gave an acceptance speech that was gracious and dignified. If he had given that same speech a month ago, he might have been elected President. Instead, he spent the last month poisoning the water. During his concession speech, he had to tell his audience to stop the booing four times. You could almost tell from their reaction that his audience ever really respected him. They circled around him when he selected the beauty queen, because she is a pro-gun, anti-abortion, bumper-sticker of a politician. The John McCain (from back in 2000 before he went 100% negative) would make a good President in many ways. Imagine if he died, a beauty queen who dropped out of six colleges before finally getting a degree in TV news-casting, would suddenly become dumbass-in-chief. Palin has a measured IQ of less than 100. She is simply not smart enough to be President.

“If they [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative
campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,
then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of
First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear
of attacks by the mainstream media.” - Palin to Chris Plante

That is an actual quote. She actually believes that the First Amendment guarantees her the right to criticize Obama and not to be criticized for it. I am totally serious. Imagine this beauty-queen mentality one
(78-year-old) heartbeat away from being nitwit-in-chief.

Imagine how different a McCain government would start. He might promise to work with Democrats, but he spent the last two years telling America that Democrats are too dangerous to be trusted in city governments, much less the military. There is not a single issue that McCain’s advisors would let him even talk to democrats, much less work with them.

Imagine how much worse a Palin Administration would be. Joe Lieberman could easily be Secretary of State, ready to re-direct America’s entire foreign policy toward Israel, as if it isn’t already. John Bolton could be running the Defense Department, eager to destroy the entire civilization of the world at a moment’s notice. John Yoo, (who wrote a memo saying that the President could torture children, if he wanted) could be on the Supreme Court, or at least back in the “Justice” Department. The President could not work to check the power of her worst advisors, because she simply is not intellectually equipped to do so.

“The Bush administration, which took office as social conservatives, is
now leaving as conservative socialists.” - Allan Mendelowitz

From 1994 to 2000, the Republican congressional majority did absolutely nothing except fight Bill Clinton. John Mica, for example, went to congress from Florida, and spent every single day of his entire term of office trying to impeach Bill Clinton. As far as can be determined, the GOP did noting for at least six years that did not involve trying to overturn Clinton’s election. Then, from 2000 up until right this minute, the executive branch was controlled by a mean-spirited, destructive idiots who seem to be determined to do the most possible damage to the United States of America. There is absolutely not one single issue that George Bush has touched for eight years that did not bring some sort of disgrace to his party, his country, or his personal honor.

Today is the day to start turning that around. Can we finally get back to running the country like a democracy?

The most important problem might be the one that is least discussed. At the moment the Supreme Court only two centrist intellectuals, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. John Paul Stevens has a good mind (but will not for long), but he is basically a centrist Republican. David Souter is younger, but also a centrist Republican.

Anthony Kennedy is well right of center, as is Roberts. And the other three are not even remotely attached to reality.  Scalia and Alito are dangerous, and Thomas just repeats whatever Scalia says.

This sheer Republican partisan power in the court is frightening. It is not good.

“Moreover. this Supreme Court forfeited any claim to be due deference
from the other branches of the government when it prostituted its office
to install George W. Bush as president eight years ago. It then
established a new constitutional principle: that if an election is close
and if one party has appointed an overwhelming majority of justices of
the Supreme Court, that majority gets to decide the election.
Republican hack Alex Castellanos said last night, on CNN: “There is no
way for us Republicans to win this election unless we had a 9-0 majority
on the Supreme Court.” That was a joke. But it really wasn’t a joke at
all, was it?” - Brad DeLong

Three of the justices who stole the election for George Bush are still on the bench. If Thomas, Scalia, and Kennedy will not do the honorable thing, the congress should impeach them. The American people need to be reminded that “Bush vs. Gore” is the worst Supreme Court decision in the history of the country, and cannot be tolerated. Justices in the Supreme Court must not be allowed to steal elections, period.

If you can’t download this post, I will just send a hologram.

After much gee-whiz technofanfare, Jessica Yellin just appeared with
Wolf Blitzer as a white-haloed figure, ‘via hologram.’ Nothing I could
say would make this interesting, including “Help me, Obi-Wolf, you’re my
only hope.” - Liveblogging GAVIN (7:22) from Sadly, No.

Seriously.

Every person in America should cringe every time George Bush opens his mouth. Here is just a sample of the stupid things he has said: “I know how hard it is to put food on your family”
“Home is where the wings take dream”.
“Rarely is the question asked, ‘Is our children learning’?”

The list goes on and on. The rest of the world looks down on America because we elected a man President who is clearly not as smart as the average person on the street.  It is embarrassing.  It is humiliating.  It makes America seem like a third-world country, where we elect any old local crony to be the President, because he seems like an ordinary guy.

When the President tries to give the German Prime Minister an unwanted backrub, did you find that endearing?

This year, we have a choice again.  Barack Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School, and was the first African American editor of the Hrvard Law Review.  He is not just smart, he is the kind of person that would be respected and admired by the rest of the world. 

John McCain, on the other hand, graduated 894 out of 898 from Navy Flight School.  He is a shallow man who makes sudden decisions with little planning or thought.  He has no insight into how the economy works, and no plans to change any of the economic policies that have failed America for the last eight years.

If Palin becomes President, the most powerful country on Earth will be led by someone who got her start in politics by winning a beauty contest.  Palin is mean-spirited, egotistical, and stupid.  She has all of the shortcomings of George Bush, with none of the natural abilities.

The GOP is fond of telling you that she has just as much experience as Obama, but just listening to her tells you otherwise.  Experience does not come from telling other people what to do, experience comes from listening.

Obama can handle questions about complex economic issues, and he has spent a great deal of time designing the policies that he wants to pursue.  Obama can defend those policies, because he believes in them.  Palin is so disconnected from policies that for five weeks in the heart of the campaign, she refused to let anyone interview her unless the questions exactly match the talking points from her campaign speech.

She is not inexperienced, she has a lack of ability, a lack of knowledge, and a lack of insight.  And if she gets to be President, America will be the laughing-stock of the entire world. Again.

For eight years, America had to make excuses for George Bush.  “He really isn’t that dumb,” we would say.  “He has a keeen political sense.”  Won’t it be nice when we don’t have to pretend that the President isn’t really a moron?

Aren’t you tired of finding out that all the tough talk like the “bring it on” comment coming from the President actually HELPS Al Qaeda?  (By the way, Al Qaeda wants McCain to win, because having a fool in the White House is a great recruiting tool for them.)

Aren’t you tired of opening the paper each morning to find some new atrocity each day?

Torture, illegal wiretaps, destroying the Justice Department, invading the wrong country, destroying the economy with bizarre and illiterate economic policies.  As a final parting gift, George Bush is preparing to turn enforcement of environmental laws over to the polluters.  It is almost as if he is trying to inflict the most possible damage on the country in the shortest amount of time.  All these things have become so common that the list is endless.

Can you name ANYTHING Bush has not screwed up? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a President that at leat knows the difference between a policy an a mistake?

Elections are serious business. The future of the United States rests on the shoulders of a single person.

If Obama is elected, he has promised to make the tax code more fair. The rich people claim this is socialism, because they don’t like to pay taxes.  But taxes pay for schools, roads, the military, and every jail in the United States. The rich people don’t want to cut off that money because they think those institutions are socialist, they want to cut off that money so they can keep more for themselves.

If McCain is elected, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.  He hasn’t just hinted at it, he has come right out and promised that he will cut the Capital Gains Tax.  Ask yourself: Do you have any big capital gains? Is this tax break going to help you and your family, or is it going to help billionaires.

Barbara West is an embarrassment to the city. There is a difference between asking hard questions and name-calling. There is a difference between journalism and campaigning.

Just take a look at the difference in the way she asked questions to Biden and to McCain. Her wording demonstrated her political bias.  “Aren’t you embarrassed” is slanted wording. “Isn’t Sen. Obama’s comment
a potentially crushing political blunder?” is a smear.

Less than a month ago, she asked McCain questions that ended in: “How do you respond to that?” or “What do you think about that?” She never asked slanted questions of McCain.  Do you remember her asking:
“Are you a robber baron for wanting to concentrate the wealth in the hands of a few?” Instead, the questions she asked McCain were smears against Democratic policies: “Let’s get back to that radio interview that Sen. Obama did several years ago…”

She never insulted Palin with her questions, either.  Do you remeber anyone asking: “Is Palin a mean-spirited bully for firing Alaska’s Public Safety Director over a personal disagreement?” Or: “How is that abuse of power any different from Dictatorship?”

And for heaven’s sakes, Republican operatives need to learn what the word “Socialism” means.

Traditionally, Socialism is when the government owns the means of production, and the distribution of goods. It has nothing to do with the tax rate you pay.

Taxes support all sorts of programs. Public schools are supported by taxes. To suggest that schools are “Marxist” because they are supported by taxes is not journalism, it is campaigning.

So by Barbara West’s definition, is Palin a Marxist? After All, she takes the oil companies’ hard-earned money and “redistributes” it to Alaskans. She said this to the New Yorker Magazine: “[W]e’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs,” That means every Alaskan gets $3,269 a year from the State, from the oil companies according to their ability to pay.

In case you are keeping score, that is way, WAY more communist that anything Obama is proposing.